Crickets in Ibiza, traditional Georgian music, and the sounds of the Amazon River recently filled the expansive Chelsea space of Kurimanzutto. Through sound pieces, eight two-channel films, mixed-media collages, drawings, and sculpture, Patti Smith and Soundwalk Collective explored our current environmental crisis, contemplating themes of destruction, rebirth, and chance.
“I look at places that hold invisible stories and memories,” said Stephan Crasneanscki, founder of Soundwalk Collective, in an interview with ARTnews. His decade-long collaboration with Smith involves gathering field recordings from locations rich in historical and emotional significance. These recordings are then paired with Smith’s poetic responses, which are often improvised. “I find it liberating to respond to pure sound and sonic frequencies,” Smith shared with ARTnews through a series of voice notes.
Crasneanscki views these sounds as a “gateway” to an alternate, reflective space shaped by Smith’s poetry. The recent exhibition at Kurimanzutto, aptly titled Correspondences, blended romantic references to 20th-century filmmakers like Pier Paolo Pasolini, whose 1969 film Medea starred Maria Callas, and notes from Jean-Luc Godard’s archive. These references were juxtaposed with footage of harsh realities: the continuous melting of glaciers, the Chernobyl disaster, and the ongoing destruction of the Amazon.
“Hearing women’s voices from the part of Georgia [ancient Colchis] where Medea was from, along with the sounds of the mountains and the sea, as well as these frequencies, drew out another level of insight and emotion,” Smith reflected. Their invocation of Medea, the Greek sorceress and princess who killed her children in revenge for her husband Jason’s infidelity, added a complex emotional layer to the installation.
For Correspondences, Crasneanscki made multiple trips to the Amazon rainforest to capture footage of nature rapidly collapsing. In Chernobyl, he encountered groups of young squatters who have made the abandoned, crumbling city of Pripyat their home. While there, he recorded the haunting sounds of thousands of pianos, destroyed by radiation. “Some of the best piano schools were once located there, and now young families live there without education or safety,” he shared.
In the 15-minute video Children of Chernobyl (2024), Smith’s resonant voice—”we were soldiers with no war”—pierces through images of decaying ruins and the disintegration of nature, culminating in a poignant shot of a child. In one segment, she underscores the devastation caused by wildfires worldwide, which have led to the extinction of numerous species since her birth in 1946. The video’s timing, in January, as wildfires ravaged parts of Los Angeles, felt especially relevant. In Mass Extinction 1946-2024 (2024), Smith lists some of the species lost over the years: “2014, Christmas Island Forest skink; 2015, Pinta giant tortoise; and in 2016, I turned 70 years old,” set against images of taxidermied animals and specimens from the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin and the National Museum of Natural History in Kiev.
Smith views this ongoing collaboration as a means to give voice to the environmental collapse happening around the world in a way that is “freeing and conducive to improvising.” The project also highlights the “sonic destruction happening beneath our seas because of oil drilling,” offering a deep, immersive reflection on the crisis.
Crasneanscki, who collaborates with Simone Merli to produce Soundwalk Collective’s final recordings, expressed his admiration for the timeless, Proustian power of sounds: “Landscapes and places change, but the sound of rain, wind, or footsteps has remained the same for hundreds or thousands of years.”
As natural wanderers, Smith and Crasneanscki form new ideas through long walks in cities across the globe. Their first collaboration, Killer Road (2016), emerged after a chance encounter on a transatlantic flight. The piece featured Smith reciting the final poems of German singer Nico, blended with the deep tones of a reed organ and the echoes from the road where Nico tragically died in Ibiza in 1988.
Over their decade-long friendship, “long conversations in Berlin or Paris about books, poetry, and film suddenly lead to an idea to work on,” Crasneanscki explained. He often travels to destinations without a fixed purpose, instead searching for “sonically interesting stories,” likening it to “walking blindfolded and finding a path to discover.” He likened Smith’s artistic output to Rembrandt’s “unmatchable” late period, noting that both convey “depth with gravitas,” with Smith showing her “passion for her subjects through poetry and defining what it means to be an artist.”
After its five-week run in New York, a version of Correspondences was presented in São Paulo at Casa Iramaia, an off-site location of the Brazilian gallery Mendes Wood DM. This iteration, titled A AMAZONIA, included abstract drawings that Crasneanscki created using red dye derived from boiled Amazonian tree leaves. “The color reminds me that the Amazon is the earth’s bloodline,” he said. Smith added her words around the edges of the drawings while listening to recordings of the Amazon from Medellín, Colombia, and Apolo, Bolivia, captured by Crasneanscki. “I tried to think through the mind of the Amazon River,” Smith reflected, adding that she could “hear the Amazon’s pride in being the longest river in the world.”
Smith and Soundwalk aim to take their performances, which spotlight the destruction of the Amazon, to various cities worldwide. Their journey will include Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Santiago, Chile, and Milan, where they will perform at Bottega Veneta’s Fall-Winter 2025 fashion show. The performance will take place at the fashion house’s new headquarters in Palazzo San Fedele, paying homage to the legacy of the late Italian architect and photographer Carlo Mollino. Smith visited Mollino’s renowned Milan apartment, where he photographed the city’s sex workers in the 1970s, and brought a version of the architect’s bed to the stage.
In April, a new iteration of Correspondences will be displayed at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, complemented by theatrical performances in both Tokyo and Kyoto.
The sonic echoes of nature continue to shape the creative partnership between Smith and Crasneanscki. “I could write a hundred more stories, not coming from me but from the Amazon’s consciousness,” Smith reflected. “The beauty in working together is not only the empathy of friendship and the lack of ego, but to magnify our subject matter and inspire people through poetry and sound.”
Soundwalk Collective & Patti Smith, Mass Extinction 1946-2024 (excerpt), 2024. Courtesy the artists and Kurimanzutto.
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